Good news, people, in the coming weeks, the Red Planet will gain altitude and progress into a less bright part of the sky. For now, it will still rise almost two hours before sunrise and hang nearly motionless just above the east-southeastern horizon, where we will able to spot it all month at dawn. Aquarius, a dim star, will move behind Mars and to its upper right. Unfortunately, for the moment telescope views are still far from being satisfactory.
Better views are on the way and the best ones we will be able to get of Mars will be when the Earth overtakes the slower-moving Mars in their respective orbits. This usually happens for a few days, when the two planets make their closest approach to each other and Mars appears directly opposite to the Sun in the sky, rising at sunset, appearing highest in the sky around midnight and setting at sunrise.
This is called opposition, but unfortunately the next one is still a long time ahead. The absolute best images of Mars will be possible on Christmas Eve, so it will take some time for it to appear bright enough to get some good views with a decent telescope. Only then Mars will be at the closest point to the Earth, of around 55 million miles (88 million km).
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Now the planet can be found at twice the distance, (163 million miles or 262 million km), but by the end of December, it will become more than four times brighter, even brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
For the time being, don't get fooled by a phony e-mail called "Mars Spectacular", saying that on August 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in the past 60,000 years, thereby offering spectacular space views of the Red Planet and even becoming as bright and as big as the moon.
It's a lie, as August 27 was an important date, but in 2003, when Mars went pretty close to the Earth, enough to make it merely appear like a brilliant yellowish-orange star, certainly not anything like the full Moon.
